Devil at the Gates

Chapter 1

1

Faversham, England - Seven Years Later

The bedchamber in Thursley Manor was dark except for a few lit oil lamps. The wind whistled clearly through the cracks in the mortar in between the stones. Harriet Russell tried to ignore the storm outside as she clutched her mother’s hand. This old house, with its creaks and groans in the night, had never been a home to either of them, yet Harriet feared it would be her mother’s last resting place.

“Harriet.” Her mother moaned her name. Pain soaked each syllable as her mother coughed. The raspy sound tore at Harriet’s heart.

Harriet brushed her other hand over her mother’s forehead. “Rest, Mama.” Beneath the oil lamp’s glow, her mother’s face was pale, and sweat dewed upon her skin as fever raged throughout her body.

“So little time,” her mother said with a sigh. “I must tell you…” Harriet watched her mother struggle for words and the breath to speak. “Soon… You will be twenty. Your father…”

Harriet didn’t correct her, but George Halifax had never been her father. No, the man who held that title had died when she was fourteen. Edward Russell had been a famous fencing master, both in England and on the continent. He’d also been a loving man with laughing eyes and a quick wit whom she missed with her whole heart.

“Yes, Mama?” She desperately needed to hear what her mother had to say.

“George is your guardian, but on your birthday, you will be free to live your life as you choose.”

Free. What an amazing notion. How desperately she longed for that day to come. George was a vile man who made her skin crawl whenever she was in the same room as him, and she wished every day that her mother hadn’t been desperate enough to accept his offer of marriage. But fencing masters, even the greatest ones, did not make a living that could sustain a widow and a small daughter.

“Mama, you will get better.” Harriet dipped a fresh cloth in clean water and placed it over her mother’s brow.

“No, child. I won’t.” The weary certainty in her mother’s voice tore at her heart. But they both knew that consumption left few survivors. It had claimed her father’s laugh six years before, and now it would take her mother from her as well.

The bedchamber door opened, and Harriet turned, expecting to see one of the maids who had been checking on them every few hours to see if they needed anything. But her stepfather stood there. George Halifax was a tall man, with bulk and muscle in equal measures. The very sight of him chilled her blood. She’d spent the last six years trying to avoid his attentions, even locking her door every night just to be sure. She may be only nineteen, but she had grown up quickly under this man’s roof and learned to fear what men desired of her.

“Ah…my dearest wife and daughter.” George’s tone sounded outwardly sincere, but there was the barest hint of mocking beneath it. He moved into the room, boots thudding hard on the stone. He was so different from her father. Edward had been tall and lithe, moving soundlessly with the grace of his profession in every step.

“Mother needs to rest.” Harriet looked at her mother, not George, as she spoke. Whenever she met his gaze, it made her entire body seize with panic, and her instincts urged her to run.

“Then perhaps you want to leave her to rest?” George challenged softly.

Harriet raised hateful eyes to his. “I won’t leave. She needs someone to look after her.”

“Yes, you will leave, daughter.” He stepped deeper into the room, fists clenched.

“I’m not your daughter,” Harriet said defiantly. His lecherous gaze swept over her body.

“You’re right. You could be so…much…more.” He paused between the last three words, emphasizing what she knew he had wanted for years.

“George…,” her mother, Emmeline, gasped. “No, please…”

“Hush, my dear. You need your rest. Harriet and I shall have a little talk outside. About her future.” He came toward her, but Harriet moved fast, despite the hampering nature of her simple gown. She’d been trained by the best to never be caught flat-footed.

“Stop!” George snarled and grabbed her by the skirts as she ducked under his arm. With a sudden jerk, she hit the ground, her left shoulder and hip hitting the pine floorboards hard. A whimper escaped her as he dragged her to her feet and slapped her across the face.

Her mother made a soft sound of distress from the bed, and she heard the whisper as though from a vast distance away.

“Harriet…go…run!”

Harriet kicked George in the groin as hard as she could. He released her to clutch himself.

“Get her!” George shouted in rage.

Two hulking men she didn’t recognize from among the household staff of Thursley Manor rushed into the room. She tried to dodge them, but they trapped her in the corner and dragged her from the room by her arms.

“Lock her up!” George’s shout followed them down the corridor.

Her mother called out weakly for her, but no matter how Harriet screeched and fought, they wouldn’t let go. She was taken to an empty bedroom and shoved inside. The door was locked with a clack of cold iron. Shivering hard, her shoulder and hip still sore from her fall, Harriet threw herself at the door, but she was too small to break the sturdy oak.

Her mother’s warning had come too late. She wouldn’t turn twenty for another month, and George was already taking control of her, just as she feared he would. There was nothing he couldn’t do to her, stranded as she was at Thursley. They were too far from the town of Faversham for anyone to come this way except on purpose. She had no friends, no one who would worry about her, which she now suspected with dread was what George had wanted all along.

The dark bedchamber was bracing in its chill. No fire had been lit in the small hearth, and she knew no one would come to see to the task. There was only one small oil lamp on the side table next to the bed. She dug around in the drawers of the side table until she found a pair of steel strikers. She used the strikers to light the lamp. The light blossomed into a healthy glow, but it offered no warmth. Outside the storm seemed to build as rain joined the howling winds.

She had to escape. Harriet attempted to pry the windows open, but nails were driven deep into the wooden frames. She even studied the lock of the door, trying to use a hairpin to see if she could twist the tumblers in a way that would set her free, but nothing worked.

A few hours later, footsteps echoed in the corridor. A key jangled in the lock, and a latch lifted. She tensed, her muscles tightening as she expected to see her stepfather or one of his men. But she saw only the cook, Mrs. Reed.

“Thank God you’re all right, lass.” The tall Scottish woman placed one hand on her bosom. “I was worried to death when I found out he had locked you up.” Mrs. Reed spoke in a whisper and glanced down the darkened hall behind her, as though fearful of being overheard.

“Mrs. Reed… My mother… Is she…?” Harriet choked on the words.

“No, not yet, lass, but there’s no time. You must go. Now.” The cook came into the room and cupped her face the way Harriet’s mother used to. “I know you dinna want to go, but you must.”

“I can’t leave Mama here, not with him.”

“You can and you will. Your mother told me when she fell ill that she feared she wouldna be around to protect you. She made me promise that I’d help you escape,” Mrs. Reed insisted. “The master has plans for you. Plans I cannot abide, you ken. He means to hurt you, to use you like a…” She shook her head as though the rest of what she might have said was too awful. “He wanted me to drug you. But I drugged him and his men instead. We dinna have long.” The cook put an arm around her shoulders and dragged her back down the servants’ stairs and into the kitchens. A scullery maid named Bess was cleaning a pot and looked up at them as they entered.

“How are they, lass?” Mrs. Reed asked the girl.

“Still asleep,” Bess whispered, her eyes wide with fear. “Mr. Johnson has the coach ready. He thinks he can take Miss Russell as far as Dover, despite the storm.”

“Dover?” Harriet repeated in shock. That was so far away.

“Aye, lassie. You’ll take this.” Mrs. Reed pulled a leather pouch of coins from a pocket in her dress. “Buy passage to Calais.”

“France?” Harriet trembled. To travel alone as a single woman was to invite trouble, possibly even danger.

“France will be safe. The master could have you tracked from here all the way to the bloody Isle of Skye in the north. ’Tis best if you leave England.”

Harriet swallowed hard and nodded. She knew some French and could learn more when she was there. Her father had relatives in Normandy, second cousins. Perhaps she could reach them and find work. She tried to do what her mother had taught her, which was to focus on a plan of action rather than let fear freeze her in place.

Mrs. Reed pulled a heavy woolen cloak off of a nearby coatrack and wrapped it around her shoulders. “We have no time to delay.” She led Harriet to the servants’ entrance, which took them to the back of the house where the stables were. George’s coach stood waiting, and the driver huddled near the horses, which pawed the ground uncertainly.

The rain came down in thick sheets, and Harriet splashed through the mud to the waiting coach.

“Take this.” Mrs. Reed followed her and handed her a basket of food before she climbed into the vehicle.

“Mrs. Reed…” There were a thousand things she wanted to say, and a dozen new fears assailed her at what her life would become now as she fled. But only one thing truly mattered above all the rest. Her mother was still dying, and Harriet was abandoning her.

“I know, lass.” The cook squinted in the rain and squeezed her hand. “I know, but you canna stay here.” She turned to head back to the servants’ entrance.

“Take care of my mother. Tell her I made it to a ship and sailed for Calais,” Harriet called out from the coach as Mr. Johnson, the driver, shut the door, sealing her inside. She wanted her mother to believe she had escaped, even if she never made it. It might be the last comfort anyone could give her. Harriet’s bottom lip trembled, and she fought off a sob.

Mrs. Reed waved at her and then ducked back inside the house. Harriet began to shake as the wet woolen cloak weighed her down. An extra chill settled into her skin from her soaked clothes.

The coach jerked forward, and the basket of food in Harriet’s lap nearly toppled over. She set it down on the floor and closed her eyes, trying to calm herself.

“Oh, Mama… I wish I didn’t have to leave you.”

But if she had stayed, the horrors she would have endured were unthinkable. And to suffer a life trapped beneath George’s control… She knew he wouldn’t honor her twentieth birthday—that must have been what her mother wished to tell her. That she would be free of him as a guardian, but she would need to escape him before he could stop her. Harriet collapsed back onto the seat and silently sobbed for her mother, for the life of the last person she’d loved in the world.

“Dry your eyes, kitten.” Her father’s voice seemed to drift from the past as old memories of her childhood came to her. She closed her eyes, imagining how he used to find her when she’d fallen and scraped a knee. He’d curl his fingers under her chin and gently make her look up into his smiling, tender face.

“Papa,” she breathed, feeling more like a child now than she had for years. She clung to the vision of him inside her head.

“You are my daughter. You do not cower when life becomes difficult. Face every challenge with courage, and refuse to accept defeat.”

Harriet’s eyes flew open as she thought for a moment that she felt a caress on her cheek. But the ghost of him vanished just as quickly as it had come. She wiped her eyes and tried to steady herself, lest she burst into tears again.

She remembered how her father used to counsel the young lords he taught fencing. Harriet used to hide behind a tall potted plant, tucking her skirt up under her knees as she watched her father move about the large room with a dozen young men wielding fencing foils. He would call out the positions, and the men would fall in line, raising their blades and performing. When they began to tire, he would call out, “Clear eyes, steady hands, you shall not fail.”

She would need that advice and more to find a new life in Calais.

She leaned against the wall of the coach, listening to the rain and wondering what the dawn would bring.